Crazy Cat

I have a sick cat. Groucho is having personal problems that are resulting in him spending a lot of unproductive time in the litter box. Over the last few weeks he’s been poked and prodded and under anesthesia twice. I figured out what the problem is but we didn’t have the medicine to treat it. So I had to order him specially made medicine. Because I’m nice I even paid extra to get it mixed into a liquid and flavored with tuna.

While we’re waiting for that to get here I’m managing his symptoms. Yesterday he was having a really hard time so I took him to work with me. I gave him a small dose of valium to get his muscles to relax so he could go. I put him in a cage and started seeing patients.

I was checking our first surgery cat in when the owner said in a slightly shocked voice, “Something’s got me.” I looked behind him and sure enough Groucho had reached a paw out through his cage bars and grabbed this man by his pants. He was trying to reel him in so the man would pay attention to him. It seems that when you take a very affectionate cat and lower his inhibitions you get an attention-seeking maniac. This started a pattern for the day. Any person within reach (and he has a very long reach for a cat) was assumed to be there for the sole purpose of petting Groucho. I had to start standing between him and other people and use one hand to pet him so he would be distracted. That saved the apologies of, “Oh, sorry ’bout that. Yes, my cat. Bit stoned out of his mind right this second.”

Then he got the munchies. Valium is said to be an appetite stimulant for cats but I’ve never seen it work well. Apparently I never gave it to the right cat. I gave him a bit of food. He dove into that bowl like he’d been starved. I’ve never seen cat jaws chew so fast. He ate a small can of food and a good sized bowl of dry food before we cut him off.

By afternoon it was all too much and he crashed. I went to see him and he was laying on his back with one paw draped dramatically across his eyes. We were all sneaking around at first so he didn’t wake up but then we realized that he was dead to the world.

The other vet there said that I was creating a junkie who would someday meet me in a dark place and mug me for drugs. I just hope the other medicine gets here soon.